Nodes for hardened boron profile

Abstract: In today’s society the car is used more and more and the new car sales
steadily increase. To be able to continue this development the automotive
industries invest a lot of money and effort on developing their cars.
Because it’s the most environment friendly, safest or perhaps the fastest
car that sells. The common factor for all this properties is that the car
body performances need to be enhanced.

Then Accra enters the picture with their knowledge in roll forming and
hardening of boron steel they can create profiles that enhance the cars
performance. To do this in an optimized way it’s of importance to join the
profiles in a way that is enabling the individual profiles performance to
bond together and create a structure with the intended features.

Therefore, there is a great need for an optimized way of joining these roll
formed boron profiles to meet the auto motive industries demand on improved
performance.

During the work with this thesis I have developed a concept for joining two
roll formed profiles.

The work was concentrated on a specific node in the car body. To be able to
use the available information to create an effective node. Then the result
would be possible to use when designing different nodes in a car body
structure.

The result is a 3D modelled prototype that has been developed with the help
of finite element methods. The node meets the demands and the requirements
with success. To validate the simulations and to test a simplified node,
prototypes has been manufactured and tested. The result of the test
confirms the simulations and the design of the node.

With this node the weight of the system could be decreased with 5 kg only
by replacing two nodes and three stamped profiles in the car body. It also
reduced the system with 8 details. Proceeding with this concept and use it
in other nodes in the car body it will be possible to save considerably
weight. This should also lead to the creation of safer and more
environmental friendly cars.